Hi @Thomas,
Not sure you are aware but there is a group a of people that are discussing possible scenarios to et a European representative of OFN. Context for this can be found here. There you can see some aspects already discussed about reasons (pros and cons) of establishing such an organization.
Supporting local producers and consumers is and should continue to be one of our key pillars. Now we cannot minimize two aspects that are basically facts:
- people want to buy products that are out of season where they live (some even that cannot grow where they live regardless of season). Should then they not have access to these products if they are originating from across the border?
- people have traded along national boarders for centuries and it is something that is evident if we take a quick look to our OFN maps of European countries (would imagine this happens in other places too, but not sure). You will see the suppliers can be found way beyond that country’s border → France; Spain; Italy; Belgium; Germany; Ireland; Greece; UK; Turkey; Switzerland
So the question being debated in this post, is not weather or not an OFN Europe should exist (I guess that has been discussed in the last gathering), but what exactly is this organization to do? We have not arrived to a general agreement here. Of particularly interest in this post, is the area of cross border trading. Therefore: should the organization go beyond knowledge sharing and advocacy aspects, and include trading across borders?